Frequent Miler on the Air - Amex Gold gets a slight touch-up | Coffee Break Ep104 | 5-5-26

Episode Date: May 5, 2026

Amex has been refreshing its credit cards lately, but the American Express® Gold Card changes are more like a slight touch up. (00:37) - What's changed?(04:02) - What's the same?(05:25) - What do we think?Visit https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe to get updated on in-depth points and miles content like this, and don’t forget to like and follow us on social media.Music Credit – Beach Walk by Unicorn HeadsMentioned in this episode:Frequent Miler's Best Offers Pagehttps://frequentmiler.com/best-credit-card-offers/Check out all of our other travel podcasts from around the worldThis podcast is part of Voyascape, a podcast network that brings together the world's best travel podcasts. You can find all of our podcasts from around the world at Voyascape.com. If you are interested in advertising or sponsored content on any of our shows you can find out more at the link below.Voyascape Podcast Network

This is a Voyescape podcast. You can find all of our travel podcasts from around the world atvoyescape.com. Today's coffee break, Amex Gold gets a slight touch-up. Welcome to Freakimilar's Coffee Break, where we focus on a single topic related to miles and points. And each coffee break is limited to 20 minutes or less, or your money back. We've been used to Amex fully refreshing their cards lately, Like the platinum card just got overhauled with a huge annual fee and tons of actually really valuable coupons.

So I was kind of thinking the same thing would happen with the Amex Gold card, but that's not what we're saying, is it? Well, no. I mean, I think a slight touch-up was the perfect way to describe this. So they have added a few things or changed a few things. First of all, there's a $10 monthly dining credit on the card, and that remains. But they've added two new options for using that. Buffalo Wild Wings and Wonder. Now, if like me you wonder what Wonder is, that's a food delivery app.

I wonder where it exists because I don't know. I had never seen it before this. So there you go. If you don't wonder about that, then that's a good new option for you. Or you don't care about it one way or the other. They are removing goldbelly and wine.com as of June 30th of 2026. So again, adding Buffalo Wild Wings and Wonder, that's already, I think, happened. But the removal of goldbelly and wine.com will happen after June 30th.

So starting July 1st of 2026, you won't have those options anymore. But you'll still have Grubhub and Seamless Five Guys in the Cheesecake Factory. So it just depends on what fits your dining habits, I suppose. Next up, they're adding Hertz five-star status. So that'll give you access to a slightly better. selection of cars if you book a mid-sized car or a higher, and it gives you a 25% bonus and point earnings. You'll learn 1.25 points per dollar instead of 1 point per dollar on your Hertz rentals. And there are going to be, or now, rather, I should say, they're adding 5x on prepaid hotels

booked through MX Travel or the MX Travel app, I suppose. So 5X on prepaid hotels, that's pretty standard fare for many of the card issuers these days to offer some sort of a bonus on prepaid hotels booked through the credit card platform. So now the MX Gold Card gets that. And a bunch of 60th anniversary offers. So these are special targeted Amex offers that are only available for MX gold card holders. Probably the most interesting of those to many people will be an Uber One membership credit. This is for an annual membership. And that's going to be available through October 30th of this year. You do need to activate that in your MX offers before you pay for your annual Uber One membership. But if you do that, then you'll get that rebated. So you'll get a free year of Uber

one, which is pretty useful since this card has a $10 monthly Uber credit or really gives you $10 worth of Uber Cash every month. So getting a free membership for Uber One is probably of use for those folks using that benefit anyway. There's also a 20% transfer bonus to Hilton available through May 30th of 2026, so that has its certain use cases. And there are MX travel offers available at select properties in the hotel collection, where you'll be able to get a complimentary third night or fourth night or 25 or 30% off of select room types and maybe $150 property credit instead of the standard $100 property credit to use towards eligible charges to your room during your stay. and some other 60th anniversary Amex offers.

There's a whole bunch of them. We have a bunch of them listed in our post about these changes. And I would imagine we will continue to see some more of those, perhaps, in the coming months. So that may be of interest if those merchants are places where you'd be spending money anyway. Yeah. All right.

So those are the new things. What's staying the same, there's a lot of stuff staying the same, including the annual fee. It stays at 325. So that's good. we're not saying hugely valuable new coupons or things. And so had they raised the annual fee, we would have been very unhappy with that. The ability to earn 4x at restaurants worldwide on up to $50,000 in spend per year remains. Same with the ability to earn 4x at supermarkets,

U.S. supermarkets for up to $25,000 a year. The ability to earn 3X on flights, booked directly with airlines or on MX travel. So all those things, main. You still get your $100 per year Rezi credits, $50 every six months. So just use a card at any restaurant that's listed on the Rezi platform and you automatically get up to $50 back each six months. $10 per month in Uber Cash you still get. You still get $7 per month towards Duncan. And the hotel collection benefits like the $100 property credit or more if you get one of those special deals that Nick mentioned a minute ago, but $100 is sort of the standard. You know, you're still eligible for that. All right. So that's what's staying the same. And we'll be right

back after this with our analysis. Hey, Nick, I just got a text from my cousin. He's asking me about a credit card offer he just got in his email and asking if it's any good. Yeah, well, your cousin ought to go to frequentmiler.com and click the link at the top of the page for our best offers page. That's the best way for your cousin to know whether or not they're getting a good offer because we're committed to publishing the best publicly available offers. So if you see an offer for a credit card anywhere on the internet, you should always compare and make sure you're getting the best possible offer. And we're back. All right, let's go through the changes to the gold card and talk about, is this good or is this a good thing? Are we excited about these changes?

And why don't you start, Nick, what do you think about the changes to the gold card? Well, you know, overall, I'm just glad that the annual fee didn't increase and that the earning structure didn't change because I think this card is already in a tough spot in terms of the annual cost. It's an expensive card to get four points per dollar on a lot of dining and U.S. supermarket spend when there are other cards in the market that bonus those categories at 3X for a lot less. So I'm glad that they didn't increase. that. I think 325 is already kind of pushing it on this card. And so increasing that would have been a mistake or decreasing the multipliers would have been a mistake. Did they add enough to make it

really matter? I don't know. I think if you're on the fence, I'm not sure that any of this pushes you over the fence. If I look at it individually, $10 a month changing that to Buffalo Wild Wings and wonder and getting rid of the other two, whatever. I mean, that doesn't really matter a ton to me personally because I wasn't using goldbelly or wine.com. If you were, I expect you're disappointed. If you weren't, I don't know if you're more likely to be using Buffalo Wild Wings and Wonder. Personally, we're just buying a $10 gift card at five guys every month since we end up stopping at five guys from time to time. And my goodness, the cost of five guys these days, I've got to save up like months of credit to feed my family once. So that's for me, it's a no change really. The Hertz five star status. I already have

President's Circle through other cards and really five-star status. Okay, yeah, you'll get a slightly better car if you book the mid-size than the gold member selection. The 1.25 points per dollar, eh, Hertz points are already not worth very much and they have a really awful expiration policy. So that doesn't matter to me at all, really. The five-star status is, like I said, maybe of some value. Not something I'd pay to get, I guess is the way I look at that. 5x on the prepaid hotels. I'm not usually booking prepaid hotels. through a credit card portal because I want my elite benefits and elite credits. And when I am, I'm usually doing it to use some sort of a hotel credit on another card. So that's not huge to me.

But if you don't have another card that offers a bonus on portal bookings, then I can see where it could be a value. I think it's smart because the gold card isn't quite a catch-all card because of the fact that it doesn't really give you any bonuses on travel-type stuff. It gives you travel rewards, but not really bonuses on travel type purchases apart from the airlines at 3X. So I think it's smart to add something here. I don't get excited about it, though. It's not something that feels like an addition to me. The 60th anniversary offers, I mean, hey, we'll save some money with a few of those. I legit have been paying for Uber 1 in order to get the discount because we have so many cards with Uber credits between platinum and gold cards in my household. So that's

something that's going to save me some real dollars and cents. So I'm happy to see that in there. transfer bonus to Hilton. Ironically, if you asked me if you should transfer to Hilton, I probably would have given you a resounding no at almost any time. It just so happens that this last week, I did have a reason to transfer to Hilton. And so I finally am in the boat where I was like, okay, fine. I use the 20% transfer bonus. So hey, glad to see that. But otherwise, not much here. I didn't even mention the travel offers in my post about this, like the third and fourth night free at some hotel collection properties, because I feel like it's always hard to tell. if there's actually any sort of benefit there, since it's usually just some different type of rate or

specific rate you have to pay to get that, quote, unquote, third night free. So it just feels like a different discount that maybe it'll work out to be good in some cases, but really hard to measure the value of that overall. I haven't personally ever booked one of those Amex travel third or fourth night free things at a rate that felt like a real third or fourth night free anyway. So I'm not enthused about the changes, but I'm not unhappy. since the annual fee didn't change, I feel like maybe it adds a smidge, a smidge for some folks. Would it be enough to make me go out and apply for the card? Or would it be enough to make me keep the card instead of get rid of it?

I don't know. In my own household, we've debated whether or not to keep a gold card. And I can tell you for sure we're going to get a free year of Uber 1. I couldn't tell you whether we'll keep the card or not based on these changes. On that point, Nick, don't forget the platinum card added Uber 1 as an automatic benefit when you pay for Uber 1. with your platinum card. And I actually haven't changed to that card. So that's actually a great point.

Where is that? Yeah, whereas this one is a limited time deal is my understanding. So yeah, for those who don't have a platinum card, though, obviously, that's a nice perk to get that. So for me, I look at these things and I say, wow, it looks like Amex saw me coming because they added Buffalo Wild Wings as a $10 per month option just when Ann Arbor lost their Buffalo Wild Wings restaurant. You know, so they're like, no $10 month gift card for you, buddy. They added Wonder, which does not deliver to my address. They took away GoldBillion Wine.com, which is interesting because I'm not sure about wine.com,

but I do know for sure. Goldbelly used to be a good option for buying gift cards online. So you could use your $10 credit each month just by buying a Goldbelly gift card online and then use them all at once to order something from Goldbelly. It looks like Wonder might sell gift cards online. Or they do sell them online, whether it would trigger the offer. I don't know. But since they don't deliver to me,

I'm not sure how much utility is there. Yeah, 1 Hertz 5 star status. You know, I look at that and go, well, there's so many other cards that offer some sort of elite status with Hertz that it's not that meaningful. But again, if you don't have one of those other cards and you sometimes run from Hertz, why not?

Having some elite status is certainly better than none. The 5X points on prepaid hotel stays, that's one of those like, wait, they didn't have that before? They were giving people one point per dollar for booking through MX travel. Are you kidding me? It's such a standard thing for most bank travel-related cards to offer 5X on pretty much everything you buck through the portal or more. So that is such a lowball offer that it's like, okay, great that they, you know, added that in.

It should have been offering, right? It should have been there all along. Either way, I'm not going to book prepaid hotel stays, you know, unless I'm getting some better deal than elsewhere, and usually you wouldn't be. Except maybe those anniversary offers. And I'll mention one thing that Hilton honors 20% points transfer bonus. It's advertised as a 60th anniversary gold card offer, but it's available for people without the gold card.

So it's a little bit strange there. So I don't know whether any of those other offers will also be available outside of gold cards. Anyway, yeah, it's, it's fine. Yeah. I'll leave it at that. There you go. So would you get or keep a gold card, like all things considered now, what it had before, what it gains, does the card pencil out for you? Or would you look at this and say, yeah, I should spend $325 on this?

Yeah, it comes out short for me. It really depends whether, to me, I think it really depends how much you value the ability to get 4X for restaurants and U.S. grocery stores. That is a very valuable perk of the card. Not many cards offer that combination, and that's, you know, most of what many people spend on food each week. So it's a great way to earn 4x transferable points. So if that matters to you, I think I would start.

there and then and then look at those other credits and say, does it make the card sort of net cheap enough that it's, it's worth paying whatever's left after you value the credits and don't value them at face value. Don't forget. If you've enjoyed this and you'd like to get on our email list, you want to go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe to join our email list, follow us on all the various social media and check out our frequent mile around the air episodes dropping every Friday. If you love travel but don't always have time to plan, we've got a podcast for you. It's called Travel in 10 and in every episode in about 10. 10 minutes, we give you a smart, practical overview of destinations all around the world.

We cover what to see, where to stay, where to eat, and what actually matters when you're planning out a truck. It's designed for real life. Listen on the way to the airport, in the car, or while you're thinking about your next getaway. So if you want expert advice, zero fluff, and travel inspiration that you can actually use, search for travel and 10 wherever you listen to podcasts, or you can also find us at voyage.com. Hi, I'm Mike Siegel, host of the Travel Tales podcast, and I'm a stand-up comedian who's been touring the world for years. And when I'm not traveling for work, I'm traveling

for fun. And when I'm not traveling at all, I'm talking with friends, influencers, expats, and other people from all walks of life about the thing I'm most passionate about, travel. So if you want to hear a fun conversation about travel and maybe even learn a few things along the way, check out the Travel Tales Podcast with Mike Siegel, wherever you get your podcasts.